Amiga on the block (again)

The Master brand singers

Common Topics

Commodore, the American personal computer company felled by mismanagement many moons ago, lives on, here and there, through trademarks and brands long since parcelled up and sold to other companies.

Amiga, the name for its expensive multimedia workstation, is owned by a US start-up called Amiga Inc - tagline: "Amiga provides the tools and technology that makes Digital Living easy."

It owns the Amiga trademark in 100 countries and it is putting this up for sale, to juice up the funding.

Its broker, a San Francisco outfit called Pluritas, notes the Amiga's "active user base". Who are they kidding?

More plausibly, Pluritas notes Amiga's "unique cult status with developer and artistic/animation community but with mainstream, mass market brand appeal" and "master brand potential [which] be extended over products and services related to the computer, technology, and gaming categories".

Any takers? Call Pluritas on +1 415 354 1760.

Whither the Amiga OS?

Post-transaction, it looks like Amiga Inc. or whatever it will be called, will retain ownership of the Amiga operating system. However, this is decidedly muddy: a Belgian company called Hyperion Entertainment owns the rights to Amiga OS 4, while Amiga Inc. seems to own everything else.

Unlike Amiga Inc., Hyperion is actually interested in building stuff and porting software to the Amiga platform.

Can't imagine too many people are interested in developing for this moribund platform, but you can check out our 2008 CES vid for a short overview of Amiga OS 5 from Amiga Inc. President Bill McEwen.